Addiction to screens - an obsession of modern life

Gone are the days of telegrams and payphones. The cell phone inside your pocket warbles to alert you that you got an email or a text message. Almost everyone has a cell phone, a regular e-mail account, a Facebook account, a Twitter account, and some even have a personal web site. This is the age of instant communication. The cell phones and Internet-enabled gadgets are so ubiquitous that life seems meaningless without those. And there are people around you who spend less on foods, clothes or entertainments but more on their phone and Internet bills.
A cell phone may be our best friend and it may be our lifeline to the outside world. But we are unaware of how this tiny gadget along with other modern Internet gismos is creeping in to rob you and me of time that could otherwise be used to enhance the quality of our family life.
Looks at heaps of emails can rob you of valuable time of your focus on other essential areas. Calls on your cell phone can destroy your schedule, forcing you to blow off really other important things. You may be oblivious of the fact that the constant use of the cell phone or continuous browsing on the Internet by your child is destroying her life to a point of no return.
The most pernicious effect of cell phone and Internet is on children who are getting alarmingly obsessed with them. Even the babies are given cell phones and baby laptops as their toys to play with. The cell phones and laptops have become kind of transitional objects, replacing the toddler's teddy bear for comfort and a sense of belonging. Parents by allowing their kids to use cell phones and browse on the Internet for prolonged time are in effect letting their children to be doomed, to get gradually addicted to a habit that can be compared to smoking, drugs or alcohol.
I know a teenager named Sabrina (my chosen pseudonym to protect her privacy), a daughter of my friend in Bangladesh, whose life has been destroyed primarily by her addiction to cell phone. She is a tall, slim, and fair girl. Her beauty was eye-catching as good as her talent that was mind-blowing. Her private tutor would say in his long career as a teacher he had never come across a student who was as meritorious as she was. She would have been among the top few scorers had she only appeared in her SSC examination. Instead, she landed in a number of rehabilitation clinics for her mental health treatment. She passed sleepless nights chatting with boyfriends over her cell phone or browsing on the Internet mostly on the Facebook or other unwholesome websites. She would get mad if anyone ever tried to snatch away her cell phone.
Sabrina is now skeletal, her eyes hollowed and her skin pale with ugly scars. She now smokes and is an addict to drugs and other vices. Sabrina had no idea that her numerous boyfriends who hobnobbed with her were her enemies. What she did not realise is that with the pushes of the 'send button' on her cell phone and a few clicks on her laptop she was actually taking 'suicide pills' that has altered her life.
The acceptance of the mobile phone by young people has been a global phenomenon in recent years. The latest smart mobile phone equipped with the Internet is now an integral part of adolescents' daily lives and is for the majority, the most popular and vital form of electronic communication. The mobile phone has, in fact, turned from a technological tool to a social tool. There has been tremendous impact of mobile phone on youth, peer and family relationships and also on the academic institutions. Scholars, thinkers, teachers and parents have gotten into a stew over how to ensure good uses and diminish the bad side effects of this marvellous technology.
Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) is now more commonly called Problematic Internet Use (PIU) or Compulsive Internet Use (CIU). Cell phones are the new addiction with the emergence of smart phones that can be used as a mini-computer. While time spent online can be hugely productive, Compulsive Internet Use can interfere with daily life, work, and relationships.
When one feels more comfortable with his or her online friends than their real ones or when one compulsively checks his or her smart phone or any other mobile device very frequently there must be something wrong with his or her behaviour, signalling an unhealthy obsession. He or she may be on the threshold of Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD).
We as fallible humans naturally want more of what makes us feel happy, at ease or socially accepted and addiction is often born from such pleasures and societal acceptances. Even the most innocuous activities like texting or chatting over phone or browsing aimlessly on the Internet can ultimately become severely addictive. Scientists have already shown that our brains get a hit of dopamine--the chemical linked to happiness--when we hear our phones beep or ring or find a message on our Facebook or Twitter pop up.
Young people, of course, use their mobile phones and Internet in positive ways to organise their studies and maintain their social networks that are beneficial for building their academic and professional careers. The same mobile phones are also used for a lot of social crimes like, for example, cyber bullying and nasty texting called 'sexting'. The mobile phone and the Internet have led to changed dynamics in the family, with issues of safety, guidance and surveillance from a parental perspective leading to an altered freedom for young people. While functional coordination through these gadgets can be beneficial, other problems arising from over-reliance on them are intruding into young peoples' lives causing disruptions to their healthy growth.
What can be done? It is not as easy as it was to train children in today's media-saturated world. Today's kids are surrounded by cell phones, computers, TVs, or video game consoles which add up to a lot of distractions that take time away from important tasks like outdoor activities and their homework. Kids are spending more time in front of screens---any kind of screen: computers, TV, cinemas, or cell phones.
Parents and teachers can play their pivotal roles in helping the children wean themselves from their addiction to the screens. Kids and teens have to be motivated to undertake activities that should get them away from those screens. First and foremost, motivate them to exercise. And there should be strict screen-time rules at home.
Parents who watch endless hours of TV, chat and text constantly, and play games addictively cannot expect their children to behave differently. If you, as a parent, set household screen-time rules, you also need to follow them. That is the rule of 'ideal parenting' the lack of which is the primary reason for kids getting involved in any kind of addictions.
The number of kids, teens, and adults reading for pleasure has dropped dramatically all over the world mainly due to their access to smart electronic devices like phones, computers and tablets.
The digital revolution has, however, given people access to e-reading and the paper book has tragically been replaced by electronic devices. Such e-reading is convenient, no doubt. But, there is something special about reading a classic paper book that e-books seem to lack. Many of the studies conducted by medical scientists have shown that reading old-fashioned paper books has plenty of advantages over e-books. They found that reading an e-book before bed lessened the production of an important sleep hormone known as melatonin. The light emitted by most e-readers shines directly into the eyes of a reader, whereas from a printed book the reader is exposed to a soothing light reflected from the pages of a book.
For those of us who are too old to get any parental care, 'self-help' is the answer to get rid of the Internet and cell phone addictions. It is time for those of us to realise that there is not much time left for us to enjoy the wonders of life. The cell phone and the Internet may be the two most enigmatic "wonders" as they reach across time and space, and connect people from faraway places. But there are marvels outside of those screens that demand our eyes to watch, our noses to smell and our limbs to feel. We should ration out our very limited time to activities our in-built genes have been used to for millions of years before the invention of these weird gismos.
Life was serene when we had our fixed-line home phones and wrote those sweet handwritten letters to our dear and beloved ones. Life now seems pretty complicated with cell phone and Internet making us ridiculously impatient and jittery. The quest for more excitement has become an obsession of modern life. In our frenzied search for fulfilment, we have gotten ourselves into situations in which we feel like we are stuck on an inescapable treadmill running at a high speed.
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